It turns out that mountainous terrain and civil war had protected the region from the notoriously machine gun and mountain climbing averse scientific community. Meanwhile, its location in the center of an ocean of African savanna meant it was ecologically protected as well -- whatever species were living there had spent years evolving in complete isolation from any known jungle creatures. The scientists quickly booked a trip to check it out in person.

Julian BaylessIf movies have taught us anything, they're all about to be murdered by gorillas.

When they finally set foot on the hidden-in-plain-sight mountain forest in 2008, what they found was practically a bio-dome paradise for biologists and botanists alike.

Wikipedia CommonsThat may not look like much to you, but all the mistletoe botanists out there just soiled themselves.

The result has been a treasure trove of new species -- the 27 square miles of lush forest have revealed pygmy chameleons, Swynnerton's robin, four new species of butterfly, pseudo-scorpions, crabs, monkeys, antelopes, rare orchids, giant snakes like the gaboon viper and a previously unknown type of adder, as well as entire colonies of rare birds. The list goes on like a yacht party with Noah.

Having evolved effectively in isolation, more new species are being discovered there to this day. In fact, it's getting to the point that whatever they pick up is new to science. Jonathan Timberlake, the original expedition leader, said of the discovery, "The phenomenal diversity is just mind-boggling."

Apparently the locals had kept their mouths shut about the pristine forest because they liked to hide there when things got too intense during their two-decade-long civil war that killed an estimated one million people. Yeah, that makes sense. We wouldn't have mentioned our very own Jurassic Park safe zone either.

Kew GardensWe're certain this little guy is just waiting to spit poison tar in the cameraman's face.

#5. Ancient Mammal Fossils

Getty

At a stonecutting yard in Italy, masons were cutting slices from a large chunk of Egyptian limestone (likely with a giant deli meat slicer) when they happened to notice they were apparently taking cross sections of a massive skeleton.

Recognized by a local expert as a whale that lived in Egypt 40 million years ago, word of the discovery eventually reached the desk of University of Michigan paleontologist Philip Gingerich, an authority on ancient whales. This was a major find, but where he needed to be was the spot where the fossil actually originated, in Egypt. The problem was no one at the Italian stonecutting shop had any idea where the slab of rock had come from, and tracing its origins was pretty much impossible. Gingerich's only clues were that it had passed through the Egyptian city of Sheikh Fadl and the vague assertion of a colleague in Egypt that the quarry was, we paraphrase, "Probably somewhere clear the hell farther East than that ...".

To Google Earth! Yes, with next to nothing to go on, Gingerich made like a modern day Indiana Jones and ... well, sat his ass down.

Using Google Earth, he scanned eastward of Sheikh Fadl until he found a range of limestone bluffs just begging to be turned into countertops. From the comfort of his office chair, he followed them east, looking for the sorts of roads that would be required to transport giant chunks of rock via truck. About 75 miles east of the city, he followed one such road to what looked like it might be a quarry. After hitting zoom and squinting at the screen for a few hours, he had friends in Egypt confirm that the road did in fact end at a limestone quarry. At this point, he finally hopped a plane, which we're sure involved a map and a line being drawn from Michigan to Egypt to a score by John Williams.

University of MichiganIt's like if someone replaced all the car chases in Indiana Jones with staring at computer screens.

Upon arriving, Gingerich realized that ancient-whale watching probably wasn't going to happen. However, he did notice bands of red in the white limestone walls of the quarry, which he could tell were signs of loose soil blown into ancient caves. And he knew that ancient caves were ancient animals' favorite places to get trapped and preserved forever as the freeloading real estate squatters they were. After a quick look around, he realized this quarry was full of more tiny bones than a garbage bin outside Hooters.

The bones were the remains of small mammals that lived in the early Miocene Epoch, some 18 to 20 million years ago -- the first small mammal fossils that ancient to be found in Egypt. Even better, not only may they represent some of the first mammals to migrate from Asia to Africa when the land bridge between them first formed, but they may also even be the ancestors of the giraffes and elephants and everything else you'd see in a Disney movie underneath a baby lion being held over a cliff.

Getty"Maybe Asia wasn't so bad."

If it weren't for Google Earth, they would be holding up bowls of pasta from inside of countertops across Italy right now.

#4. A Way to Cheat at Fishing

While studying the west coast of Wales using Google Earth, archaeologists discovered something unusual in the waters off Poppit Sands, a small beach community near where the Teifi Estuary flows into the sea: a giant underwater "V" so precise it had to be either part of the most pointlessly huge emoticon ever formed or an ancient fish trap.

These underwater traps were once used to catch massive amounts of fish all at once by trading in the typical fishing boats and rods for some good ol' fashioned interspecies cheating. As the outgoing tide forced the fish along the walls to bottleneck right toward a single gap, nets could be placed there, or the gap could be blocked and the fish would basically catch themselves. This particular trap was over 280 yards long with walls 3 feet wide, making it one of the biggest of its kind ever discovered, and is estimated to be close to 1,000 years old. It likely caught a few fish in its day.

In fact, these mass fishocide funnel contraptions were so good at their job that they were eventually banned in the Magna Carta from use in rivers, or anywhere else for that matter, except for along the coasts.